Rebels Read online

  Before leaving Belfast that night, Carson presided over a secret meeting in Craig’s family home, Craigavon. Present was a large group that called itself the Ulster Provisional Government. To each of them, Home Rule meant Rome Rule.

  In 1908, Pope Pius X had passed a decree, the Ne temere, making mixed marriages between Catholics and Protestants invalid unless in a Catholic Church and with a joint promise to bring all the children up as papists. Protestants saw this as an infringement of their basic rights as parents. Worse still, pope after pope had said that when Catholics were in a majority, they were forbidden to tolerate ‘heretical’ errors. Northern Protestants could not stomach the idea of becoming a minority in a Catholic state.

  ‘By God,’ Carson kept repeating, ‘I’d prefer to be governed by the Kaiser than the Pope.’

  The Provisional Government made plans to take over every civic post ‘in trust for His Majesty the King in every Court and office of the Crown in Northern Ireland’.

  As the meeting ended, Craig handed his Chief a piece of paper with a code-word on it. Carson had only to send a telegram containing that word and the Ulster rising would begin. They would be facing not merely the Irish Volunteers; easy meat. No, their main foe would be the British army itself.

  Carson looked through the tall west-facing window over the lake that mirrored many orange-flamed bonfires and winced. That telegram would bring rebellion in fire and blood to the streets of Ulster.

  By the lightship, the work went on hour after hour into a night lit only by the boats’ riding lights. Molly Childers did her bit by putting food straight in the crew’s mouths.

  It was well after midnight before they started taking the ammunition boxes on board. A German sailor, stripped to the waist, called down, ‘Achtung. Careful, bitte, if you knock zem or drop zem, bang!’ He lifted both sweaty arms in the air to indicate an almighty explosion.

  Three boxes were below when one of the Gladiator’s riding lights came loose and dropped straight through the Asgard’s hatch. A sailor, bowing over the rail, swore heroically as the lamp bounced off Molly’s shoulder, covering her with paraffin before landing upside-down in a heap of straw. The straw flared up in an instant. Molly snatched it away from the ammunition with her bare hands and stamped on it. To everyone’s relief the lamp spluttered out.

  By 2 in the morning, the cargo was aboard. However well trimmed, it was unevenly distributed and the yacht was dangerously low in the water should they run into a storm.

  The German skipper came aboard for a farewell drink. Stepping gingerly on top of rifles piled three feet high, he turned a blind eye to the Irish label on the whiskey bottle.

  ‘If you vish,’ he growled good-naturedly, sitting cross-legged, ‘I tow you to nearly Dover.’

  The crew of the Asgard spread their mattresses over the guns to get some shut-eye as dawn broke and the boat cut the sea at an unusual ten knots. Near the Sussex coast, with the grass- and rose-smells of an English summer wafted over chalk cliffs sweetening the brine, the tow-ropes were cast off.

  Figgis stayed on board the Gladiator for Dover where he had business to attend to. He slipped Childers a final note. ‘I’ll be waiting for you when you land. All the best.’

  The skipper of the Gladiator called out, ‘Good luck in Mexico,’ before his boat disappeared in the mists.

  The crew hoisted the sails and Childers set a leisurely course westwards along England’s southern coast towards his forbidden destination.

  Childers dropped Shephard off at Milford Haven in Wales so that he could rejoin his flying unit.

  At 1.20 in the afternoon of 24 July, the Asgard began the last stage of her journey across the Irish Sea. The sun beamed in a blue sky, the wind had dropped. Childers feared he might be becalmed. If he missed the tide in Howth, he would be unable to enter harbour.

  It was not mild weather that jeopardized his plans.

  At midnight a north-west wind sprang up. He was alerted by a clap of canvas and a jerk of the boom. He looked at the glass. Dirty weather on the way. He checked the sidelights and noted the compass-bearing. He double-lashed everything in readiness for the concussions to come.

  The air turned sulphurous; stars came and went under ragged clouds. Childers had the impression of a moon galloping in the sky. After an initial sparrow-like tweet, the wind hummed, then cracked like a whip before ushering in the worst storm on the Irish Sea in thirty-two years.

  Molly lay in the cabin, holding on to a metal stanchion, thinking of her sons soon to be orphaned. Mary Spring-Rice crouched green-gilled in the cockpit, for the first time terrified.

  Childers was obliged to stay on deck all night and fight every inch of the way. He was tired to begin with. It had not been easy sleeping, with the cargo taking up most of the air-space; and his limbs ached from being cooped up. Now he was to be tested to the limits.

  Waves, black, mountainous, snow-capped, broke all around him, fizzing like champagne.

  He grasped the tiny wheel, entwining his knees in the spokes, determined to die rather than let go. Rising and falling, his temples bursting, he thought not of God, life, death, wife, children; only of rifles, rifles, rifles.

  The darkness was now absolute. His head seemed stuck in a bag. The yacht rolled as though wanting to breast the sea, detaching objects and hurling them like projectiles across the deck. Somewhere, a plank crumbled and sprinkled him with chips of wood.

  A sudden gust whipped off his sou’wester so that rain plastered his hair to his head like a scab. The gale’s huge hand pressed against his mouth. Water, now fresh, now salt, splashed his eyes, jammed his ears, dribbled into his mouth, streamed up his nostrils; it blinded, deafened and choked him. In spite of his sea-boots and oilskins, he was soaked to the skin. His clothing was heavier than armour and his brittle limbs shivered from the cold.

  The wind was his worst enemy. It turned him inside out. It left him drunk, almost senseless, tempting him to sleep, to surrender himself to a deep and lasting aqueous peace.

  Now when the Asgard pitched, it dropped like a stone over a precipice. Then, with all hope gone, it lifted and soared like a bird.

  At the height of the storm, too weak a sound to be heard above the tumult but felt by Childers like an earthquake, the tackle broke. He roused himself from a kind of coma. Having lashed the helm, he crawled tremblingly on all-fours, grabbing every ring-bolt, groping till he found the mainmast. The sky cleared momentarily, revealing an ermine-coloured sea.

  Taking a huge breath, he, a tiny, shapeless, clumsy mass, began to climb. Step by step he ascended the rigging, expecting every second to be ripped off by an indifferent animal-like wind and sent spiralling afar into the sea. Spluttering and blowing amid a tangle of ropes, he was keen to finish his task, with thick, pneumatic fingers, before the boat broke up.

  He hugged the drunk and heaving mast in the pitch dark. Squally rain nettled his eyes. A howling wind tore at his hair, anaesthetized his teeth, forced its way through compressed lips and barred teeth to fill his mouth fuller than wine, roughened his sinuses, scoured his lungs like pumice, made his clothes cling to him like an extra layer of skin. Never had he needed his remarkable strength and will-power more. His hands chafed, blistered and froze so that he could not feel them as slowly, surely, he lashed the tackle down.

  When he regained the deck his legs felt boneless and he was almost spent; but he continued his solitary vigil, barnacled to the helm, until the wild seas calmed.

  It had been a close call.

  At daylight, when Molly came on deck, he was crouched over the wheel so still she wondered at first if he were alive. His face was a Russian winter. His hair and eyebrows were salt-white turning him into a grizzled old man. She kissed him tenderly and put a drink to his lips.

  Though his body ached, he had the boat in position. Ten miles south-east of Howth he hove to.

  It was a chill fresh morning, pearly-grey like the inside of a sea-shell, with sharp showers.

  He ran up the flag of the
local Cruising Club in preparation for sailing into Howth the next day. Then he went below to sleep.

  On shore, young Bulmer Hobson, as innocent to look at as he was ruthless within, had made preparations for the landing. An Ulsterman himself, he admired the efficiency with which Carson’s men had run Ulster’s arms into Larne at night and spread them through the province by trucks, cars, and even Rolls Royces. He wanted to go one better.

  The arms on the Asgard did not match Ulster’s in number or quality. But what he could do was bring them ashore in broad daylight. That would fire the imagination of Home Rulers everywhere.

  Sunday 26 July broke, calm and peaceful. The British gun-boat, which had been blockading Dublin Bay, had gone south on a wild-goose chase inspired by Hobson.

  From Dublin, several hundred Irish Volunteers set out under a smart young officer, Ned Daly, on an apparently normal route march with broom-handles for rifles. Most of them had no idea what to expect in Howth.

  Hobson was pleased to note that the Royal Irish Constabulary was having the day off. Only a few children joined them occasionally to jeer.

  At 10 a.m., the Asgard lay behind Lambay Island in a heavy swell. Darrell Figgis was to come out in a motor boat. That was the signal for the yacht to enter harbour.

  Childers checked with Molly. ‘Figgis did say the boat would be here by 10 if all was well?’

  She nodded.

  Another hour passed. Were the RIC on to them? If they sailed into harbour – and time was running out – would they fall into a trap?

  The truth was more prosaic. Figgis had chartered a motor boat from the coastal town of Bray. It had made its way north up the coast for fifteen miles in rough seas. The boat’s owners had had enough for one day.

  Figgis was crouched on the pier, cajoling, cursing as only an Irish man knows how, offering bribes the pilot in Hamburg would have given an arm for. No use.

  Gordon Shephard, next to Figgis, caught occasional glimpses of the Asgard at the edge of the island. ‘She’s there, I tell you!’ he yelled. ‘The bloody boat’s there.’

  Childers had his orders: ‘If there’s a hitch at Howth, sail around Ireland to the Shannon. You will be able to unload in the west in safety.’ There was a hitch; but his crew had been at sea for twenty-three days with only five on shore. They were spent.

  Michael O’Rahilly, called The O’Rahilly because he was the head of his clan, arrived on the pier. Nearly forty, he was married to a Philadelphian, Nancie Browne. A devout Catholic from Kerry, he spoke Irish loudly and abominably with broad gestures to his children on top of the Dalkey tram. He often entered a café and addressed everyone in this murdered Irish, to ensure that the old language of the Gael was heard sometimes even in Dublin.

  Next to him was a small man with a back like a ramrod. Charlie Burgess had changed his name to its Irish equivalent: Cathal Brugha. He had a fluffy moustache, flint-grey eyes and a firm jaw. A commercial traveller by trade, he was a fine athlete and gymnast.

  The two of them had brought a party of twenty to unload. Provided the Asgard appeared. They checked their watches for the tenth time. They put their glasses on the sea. Nothing. It looked to them like another Irish foul-up.

  Behind them in town, several taxis drew up. Inside were young men with their girls in summer dresses, seemingly on a day’s outing to Howth with its harbour and verdant hills.

  The taxis were, in fact, for transporting the ammunition boxes into Dublin. Hobson thought the Volunteers were not yet disciplined enough to be given live rounds; they might start a private war at once. The boxes were to be entrusted to the Fianna, the Irish Boy Scouts, whom he trusted because he had trained them himself.

  The young men helped their girl-friends out of the taxis and went into the dining-room of the hotel overlooking the harbour. They asked for menus and ordered lunch.

  In Philadelphia it was early morning. Sir Roger Casement was staying with an Irish-born business man, Joseph McGarrity. Joe, tall, oval-faced, was a leading light in the Clan na Gael, the chief Irish separatist movement in the States.

  Casement, just over from Dublin, had helped finance and organize the arms-running. Too on edge to sleep, he had steeled his heart against failure. Soon, he felt, he would be receiving a telegram, Picnic prevented or broken up.

  ‘Go on, Childers,’ he urged, tugging on his black beard. ‘Go on.’

  Childers was still wrestling with his lonely decision.

  Molly eyed her husband pityingly. One mistake and the whole glorious enterprise would be ruined. If captured, Erskine would also be in for a heavy fine, perhaps imprisonment.

  He suddenly jumped to. ‘Well, what are we waiting for?’

  Molly grabbed the helm. Mary Spring-Rice stood up in the bows in a bright red skirt, the signal that all was well. The three-man crew manned the halyards as the Asgard surged in on the tide.

  The O’Rahilly saw the white yacht first and yelled, ‘Look, the harbinger of liberty.’

  In the hotel young men startled their girl-friends by pushing their meals aside and rushing out of the main door towards the harbour.

  Molly luffed; down came the main, followed in moments by the jib and the mizzen.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ gasped Childers. They were heading straight for the wall of the east pier. For one nasty moment he thought the boat would founder and, irony of ironies, discharge her precious cargo in Howth harbour.

  Alongside the quay twenty Volunteers appeared. Mary called out with delight, ‘I can see Gordon and Figgis.’ At the head of the pier someone caught the rope and made the Asgard fast. It was 12.45 p.m.

  Now hundreds of Volunteers converged on the yacht. That was when Childers knew he had succeeded against all the odds.

  Hobson put a guard at the entrance to the harbour as his men, with a wild cheer, tossed their broom-handles in the sea. There was a scramble for the rifles until Childers demanded, ‘Who’s in charge here?’

  Up stepped Cathal Brugha. ‘Me.’ As soon as he took over, order was restored.

  From the western breakwater customs officials made for the Asgard in a motor launch. When a few unloaded rifles were pointed their way they turned back. Four against a thousand were not decent odds. They put through a telephone call to Dublin Castle instead.

  In the Castle, the seat of British administration, Assistant Commissioner of Police David Harrell took the call. He alerted the British Under-Secretary at his lodge in the Phoenix Park, west of the city.

  Sir James Brown Dougherty, Ireland’s top civil servant, said, ‘Put the Metropolitan Police on the alert.’

  Harrell obeyed but on his own initiative he phoned the military for help. If the Irish Volunteers now had rifles, his men, who were not armed, would be mown down.

  A detachment of a hundred of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers under Captain Cobden left barracks and joined Harrell’s police patrol. They headed for Howth on hastily requisitioned trams.

  In 77 Amiens Street lived a man named Clarke, the owner of a tobacconist and newsagent shop in the centre of Dublin which was scarcely bigger than a prison cell. Over the shop, in Gaelic letters, was the name ‘T. S. O’Clerigh’. Everyone knew him as the Old Chap or plain Old Tom Clarke.

  For Dublin Castle this frail-looking jug-eared tobacconist with hair like a half-blown dandelion was Enemy Number One. The biggest file in the Castle, red for very dangerous, had on its cover: ‘Clarke, T.’

  Clarke had been a member of the secret and banned Irish Republican Brotherhood since 1878. No one had been more faithful to the oath he took: ‘Our duty is to nerve and strengthen ourselves to wrest by the sword our political rights from England.’

  At twenty-five he had learned to blow up rocks on Staten Island in New York. From there he was sent to England to blow up London Bridge or the Houses of Parliament. Caught at once with a case containing liquid explosives, he was tried at the Old Bailey in 1883. In a careless moment he had corrected a remark made by the State Prosecutor about the type of bombs used in the campaign.
It cost him penal servitude for life. He vowed never again to use one more word than was needed. On 21 September 1898 he was let out of Pentonville Prison after serving fifteen and a half years.

  He went at once to visit his old jail mate John Daly, now Mayor of Limerick. There he fell in love with the third of Daly’s eight nieces, Kathleen. He had gone on vacation with them to County Clare by the shores of the Atlantic. He and Kattie had risen at five and climbed a hill to see the sunrise. Soon after he went ahead to America to get a job, married Kattie in New York, and settled in Brooklyn where their first son was born in 1900.

  John Devoy, an Irish-American who had himself been in a British prison, took him under his wing. Devoy was head of the Irish Republican movement, its chief organization being the secret Clan na Gael.

  Clarke became a naturalized American. Then it struck him that if England went to war with Germany the Irish at home might not be ready to rebel.

  In 1907 he returned to Dublin to find the Brotherhood as organized as cows in a field. He knocked them into shape. He became the contact with the Clan in the States. His letters to Devoy, sent by courier, began ‘Dear Uncle’ and were signed ‘T. James’. From the Clan he received funding for any Irish venture that might hasten the day of independence. The Castle was right to class him as Enemy Number One.

  Now fifty-seven years old, Clarke was wiry and narrow-waisted. Grey eyes glinted behind metal-framed spectacles. His footsteps, short and crisp, expressed the determination that nerved his entire being. In a Brotherhood recently filled with young recruits, he, the treasurer, remained the drummer; they marched to his beat.

  On this Sunday afternoon Clarke had a visit from his best friend. Sean McDermott, just over thirty, had a relaxed cheery manner but he would stop at nothing to win freedom for Ireland. Three years before, polio had badly affected his spine; he walked now with the aid of a stick. Not that it stopped him touring the country, signing on Irish Volunteers while he appointed members of the IRB as their senior officers.